I was shaken awake.

It was Jade, the “golden-haired” girl. I gave her the nickname a while ago because of her shiny jade coloured eyes.

At first, she tried to correct me and get me to properly say her name, but I could never get it right, so she just accepted the nickname. Every morning she came to wake me up. Apparently, Hare rang a bell every morning to wake us up, but since I never heard it, she took it upon herself to get me out of bed. Hare was the nickname I gave to the white-haired red-eyed man who was in charge of the orphanage. He also tried to correct me as Jade had done, but to no avail.

I grumbled and tried to close my eyes again. She roughly shook me again and lifted me out of bed by the armpits.

It was at those moments that I always seemed to notice that she was quite a bit taller than I was, making me self-conscious of my height. I swore to myself to take revenge when I got older.

She dropped me to my feet, still in my pyjamas. I grumbled, to which she only pulled her tongue while winking. She froze her expression and looked down the hallway through the door frame. She looked back at me and signaled me to get dressed quickly.

I swallowed another grumble and got dressed.

I picked up Darkie and Jade took me by the hand.

“Good morning!”

[Good morning, Darkie. Slept well?]

“Mhh mhh, but you woke me up again last night.”

[Is that so? My bad…]

We walked down the hall to the dining room where the others were already seated, waiting for us.

I saw a couple disdainful and angry looks, which was nothing out of the unusual. The other kids didn’t really seem to like me.

As I passed one of them, they pushed out their foot and made me trip. I would have fallen on my face if it hadn’t been for holding hands with Jade. I turned around ready to throw a punch in the kid’s face, but Jade pulled me back. She dragged me forward and made me take a seat at the table beside her.

Hare gave me a disapproving look before beginning the usual short meal prayer.

I sneered quietly. It was that fat boy who was picking a fight, I was just defending myself. The orphanage had a strict no violence policy. If you were caught fighting, you were forced to stay alone in the study room until you apologized. The idea didn’t bother me, but what bothered me was that he never caught the other kids being mean to me.

I quickly wolfed down my meal and escaped the dining room. It wasn’t against the rules to leave before everyone was done since it wasn’t my turn to help with the dishes, but it still earned me another disapproving look from Hare.

He reminded me of the head maid back at the estate with his ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude.

Once I reached the playroom, I sat by the windowsill as I waited for Jade to be done with her meal. Outside, the snow had piled up quite a bit. Back in Oblon, the snow only ever went as high as my knees, but here, I could easily have gotten lost underneath... Which Was probably the reason why only the older kids were allowed outside in the snow.

That and the cold.

Jade finally arrived in the room and I jumped off the windowsill, ready to go play, but, to my disappointment, she pulled out a large book and pointed toward the door.

My mouth pursed.

It had been about a month since I had arrived at the orphanage and it seems that Hare had taken upon himself to make me learn how to read.

I followed Jade up the stairs to the classroom of the orphanage. There were no dedicated class times, but Hare would bring in groups of kids into the room at intervals so he could teach them. Since I was a particularly difficult case, he always made me come alone or with Jade so he could focus on teaching me.

It was… Difficult.

I had never learned to read back on the estate since my formal education was only supposed to start once I turned 6. I roughly know my alphabet, but as it turns out, it wasn’t the same alphabet that was being taught to me here.

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When I tried pointing that out to Hare by comparing one of the books in the library that had the alphabet I had been used to seeing in the books my sister had read to me, he simply drew a crown on the chalkboard.

From what I gathered, there were two alphabets, one for the nobles and one for the commoners. The noble alphabet looked much longer. A single word could take half a line. While this commoner alphabet often only took a handful of letters.

Through trial and error and some helpful drawings from Jade, I eventually understood that each letter represented a syllable of a word, but not being able to hear that syllable made it extremely difficult to read, let alone memorize. There were so many bars, dots and hooks added to the characters, it was difficult to remember what each did.

After a long study session I felt exhausted. I wasn’t sure what I was learning, but it sure was draining!

As I slouched on the chair, Hare took out a candy from his pocket and handed it to me with a smile.

I excitedly took it from and started munching away.

[Maybe learning isn’t so bad after all!]

I told Darkie as Jade and Hare discussed something by the chalkboard.

Jade came back toward me and signalled me to follow her. We went down the stairs but as I headed for the playroom, she pulled me back and shook her head.

Instead, we headed for the storage room in the basement. Inside, she started looking through the boxes and eventually found what she was looking for. She put the box on the floor. It was filled with white dresses. Baptism dresses.

Something finally clicked in my mind.

[So that’s why we had the play the other week!]

She didn’t understand what I said but still smiled at my excited expression.

Baptism was when a child chose their patron deity and received their insignia. Of course, some people could get baptised throughout their life, but it was considered a rite of passage for all children. It was usually a big event with lots of food and sweets and your entire family came to church to….

As I thought about my family, my smile broke.

My parents had always told me how important it was to dedicate myself to Meiriem. That no matter what I had to ask for her blessing… But now, they weren’t here and I sure didn’t want to give them that satisfaction, even if they never came to learn of it.

The question became, from whom should I ask a blessing from? I could always ask from Seeir, but wouldn’t that also be within those people’s expectation? When they hadn’t been praising Meiriem’s glory, Seeir was at the tip of their tongue.

Jade didn’t seem to notice my perplexed expression and instead checked the dress's sizes.

They all had different shapes and designs. The only real rule for a baptism dress was that it had to be white. Even boys wore a white dress on that day…

It should have been an exciting prospect to get dressed in a pretty white dress, but somehow my mind was filled with thoughts of my mother.

As Jade excitedly showed me different frilly skirts and sleeve design, the shadow of the basement took strange shapes.

I could feel her again, leaning on the wall far in the back. I could feel her icy blue eyes pierce dagger into my skull.

The blood in my vein froze and a ball grew in my throat.

The walls changed colours. I was back. It had been months now, but I was back again in that room. The plain dimly lit walls, the stained marble floor and the light filtering from underneath the door.

I fell to my knees. I thought I had finally escaped this place, but had it all been a dream? An illusion?

[She’s coming for me...]

I looked around for an escape, but there weren’t any. There had never been any.

The door flew open and the silhouette of my mother appeared like a shadow. It started walking toward me.

[No… ]

I got back to my feet and tried to back away, but her shadow didn’t stop. She was reaching toward me with her long bony fingers.

[Please stop! Leave me alone!]

I screamed as I backed away, but soon enough I had my back against the wall. She stopped and observed me from a distance as I cried and begged. I could see her heinous grin as she sprinted toward me. Reaching for my throat.

[NOO!]

I closed my eyes and collapsed into a ball on the floor waiting for her claws to wrap around my neck…

But instead, something warm enveloped me.

I cautiously opened my eyes.

Goldie was there. She was staring at me with her tender golden eyes smiling through the tears she always tried to hide from me.

I hugged her as tightly as my arms allowed me and buried my head into her chest.

When I opened my eyes again, Goldie was gone and instead of her, Jade was hugging me tightly. Squeezed between us was Darkie, still in her hand.

We were back in the basement. The marble floor was gone and uneven bricks had replaced them. The walls were back to wooden planks.

I slowly broke the embrace and looked around for a bit, worried that my mother would be back, but she was gone.

I looked at Jade. She looked worried, but she didn’t say anything… Not that I would have understood anyway. She gave me back Darkie and helped me back to my feet.

Holding my hand, she went back to the box, took one more look at the dresses and picked one at the top of the pile.

She looked at me once more and smiled. It was a sad smile. The same Goldie had given me often in the past.

She turned around and without another word, we left the basement hand-in-hand.